


Shitty Punchlines Are The Purest Form Of Self-Deprecation

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Feelings Jams With A Healthy Side Of Sexual Tension, Hellish Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:31:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laying somewhere solidly post-credits and wondering, when do we start feeling like winners? Or is that not part of the package? Where's our fucking GameFAQs guide to navigating these stupid first steps into an eternity processing whatever the FUCK just happened, here? </p><p>Going through that door was supposed to fix everything. Wasn't it? </p><p>What's it going to take to fix ourselves?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shitty Punchlines Are The Purest Form Of Self-Deprecation

Nebulous dreams of an infinite, empty expanse. Blinding white except for the sick, jagged black cracks pulling at him like a riptide. Feeling small and scared and awed and horrified -- Did he do this? Did his friends? Was it Vriska, or the alien skull-muscle chimera she insisted on taking care of herself? Do these eldritch cracks in all the nothing lead to _something?_ Is he brave enough to get close? 

… Nah. 

He’s a god of time adrift in a place where he _knows_ his aspect is powerless. Meaningless. Feels the truth of it singing in his soul. 

But this is just a dream. 

Way back somewhere sideways, somewhere more real, somewhere he knows he’s tethered to and knows also that this tether is the only thing keeping him sane, there’s a violent burst of motion beside him, another body wrenching upward. And Dave wakes up, because even after all this time, he can’t _not._ The way the mattress creaks and the breathless, wavering little _gasp_ that accompanies it. Sound and stimulus. Cause and effect. The tether snaps him into his supposedly-immortal shell and he’s awake and his heart’s beating fingers twitching and this is what his brain does: 

_Get your sword he’s to the right so you gotta go left and land on your feet don’t you fucking trip over a stray puppet ass jesus christ just for once do this right wake up wake UP_

But. 

But there's enough distance on his own personal fucked up timeline between now and the last time any of that mattered that his body _doesn’t_ react automatically, and hey, that’s progress. He’s all tense with aborted energy and this swirling mass of adrenaline-fueled dread that still takes way too long to drain off in the waking world. His shitty instincts are outdated, which is kind of hilarious in a way that Rose would probably describe as _delightfully macabre._ That’s fair. Did you hear the one about the kid who was relentlessly harassed for thirteen years all for the sake of ensuring he could break some shitty swords and survive a few crucial decapitation-filled seconds? Funniest horror story ever. 

Karkat is kind of hyperventilating beside him. His movements are off, stuttering, limbs shaking out a staccato rhythm as he reaches for Dave in the dark. His stubby alien fingers find Dave's not-so-alien lanky-ass arm and grip tight enough to hurt a little. He sucks in a deep rumbling breath and holds it, chest puffed out. Dave’s eyes roam down his back and note the way his shirt is stuck to his back with sweat. 

"Yeah, check it," Dave says, and Karkat jumps. The way his eyes widen is easy to see because they practically fucking glow; reflective sclera, yet another exciting element of alien biology that somehow fails to ever get old. Dave can actually hold the eye contact for a little while now without snapping his gaze elsewhere in a panic. Hell yeah. What a Romeo. 

"Still here, bro,” Dave informs him. It’s easier than it really should be to keep his tone light. Instincts. “All in one piece and everything." 

Karkat’s brows pull down, and he mutters a very audible "Fuck," but his grip doesn't loosen. If anything, it gets tighter. 

"Feel free to examine me all you want," Dave says, waggling his own eyebrows in response. "I'm totally at your mercy, Doctor Vantas, ready and willing to undergo vigorous testing until all parties are satisfied--" 

Karkat lets him go. Dave misses the contact immediately, worries levity wasn’t the right call (of fucking course it wasn’t what the fuck is wrong with him) but his mouth is already running and his brain has no fucking clue how to apply the brakes. "--that this is a genuine Dave Strider, no imitations, substitutions, refunds or warranties, take it or leave it, you break it you bought it--" 

Karkat doesn't even try to interrupt, at least not verbally. Instead, he turns and slings one arm over Dave's stomach, flopping down half-beside and half on top of him, head resting on his chest. "--Oh, shit," Dave huffs out, along with an involuntary little laugh that's half exasperation and half… what? Surprise? Wonder? _Wonder, seriously? Gay._ Karkat's hair is thick and kind of scratchy on his bare skin, but Dave's fingers move automatically to bury themselves in it, running practiced little circles into his scalp. Karkat's arm tightens around him, and that makes him feel several distinct emotions, each one sort of frighteningly intense, and they all crash together in his brain and leave him feeling a little like one of Dirk's shitty prototype robots built out of scavenged drone parts: short-circuited, sparking and smoking in a way that manages to be simultaneously unsettling _and_ hilarious. He swallows. 

"Hey," he says, and it comes out all soft and stupid, but Karkat usually likes that, so that's fine. It's cool. Whatever. "You're all right," he says. "We're okay. This is Can Town, remember? Nothing bad happens in Can Town." 

Karkat does this full body shiver against him that's probably -- hopefully -- at least partially a laugh, and Dave feels him nod, shifting warm against his skin. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Sorry." 

"No apologies needed," Dave says, maybe a little too fast. He’s way too aware of their bodies, of the way Karkat’s warm grey alien skin feels against his. God. He loves being held. It’s stupid. He is so fucking weak. Troll skin is smoother, thicker but still softer than human skin, Rose says the texture is different because trolls don’t have pores evolved to handle hair follicles and wow, nice, that is the least sexy thought he’s ever had in his life, holy shit. Thank you, past Rose, for the free boner repellent. Guaranteed to keep serious feelings jams one hundred percent on the up and up, or maybe on the down and down since not going up is kinda the point. 

Thank god that as far as he knows no one can read his fucking mind, and his mouth has never needed a direct connection to it to keep right on making words. 

"This is like, a full on feelings zone, obviously, so actually, let me amend that to no apologies _allowed._ Leave the apologies at the door. Drop that shit way out at the fuckin gate, don't even ring the bell, just kick it like a basketball, that yard is full of dobermans and your postal ass is fresh out of fucks to give." 

Karkat laughs again, and this time Dave can _hear_ it, verify that's what's happening, laughter is happening, and it even kinda sounds a little bit maybe genuine, so that's nice. "I have no idea what any of that shit you just said means," Karkat informs him, "But thanks." 

"Yeah," Dave says. He feels like he should say more. Karkat doesn’t offer anything else, electing to just lay there nuzzling him or whatever the fuck he’s doing -- it’s nice -- instead. The silence settles down on him like an itch between his shoulder blades, so he works on synchronizing his breathing with Karkat's. Something to focus on. The adrenaline is wearing off, now, replacing itself with pleasant lethargy. Karkat's breathing deepens, his arm loosens around him, and pretty soon Dave is sure he's settled right back down into sleep, so when he talks again it's startling as fuck. 

"I somehow thought, when we went through that door, we'd be leaving all of the bullshit of paradox space behind," Karkat says, and Dave's fingers tighten a little in his hair. "But we didn't, did we? Not even a little bit." 

"Come on, dude, we did at least a _little_ bit." 

"But we didn't! We _didn't._ ” Karkat’s hand lifts and lands hard on Dave’s chest, like he’s the podium to the impassioned speech. “Our causality is still every bit as fragile as it always has been. There could be _infinite_ iterations of us still destined for a doomed timeline, and there's no telling, there is _no fucking telling_ when or how or what actions will or won't lead to withering away on some sad shriveling branch of hyperfucked space-time forever! And I have a history, Dave. A storied history of being the catalyst that spawns enough doomed timelines to field an _entire army's_ worth of dead friends." 

Karkat can't speak without getting real animated about it, without lifting his head and waving his arms and furrowing his brows, and Dave can't help but just sort of tilt his chin down and watch his face. The way he wears every emotion he ever has on the planes and lines and slopes of his features, how he throws down his feelings like a fucking gauntlet between them, how he sounds like he's about to just overflow himself and spill everywhere. Karkat settles on a glare and pins Dave down with it, glinting yellow daggers. Fuck, those eyes. If he wasn’t so fucked up, he could probably be happy staring into those alien yellow laser eyes forever. If he wasn’t so fucked up, maybe his first self deprecating thought in the wake of that embarrassing observation would be more like _wow, you nasty fucking xenophile_ instead of _wow, you hopeless fucking homo._ It’s fucking _hilarious_ that it isn’t. Isn’t it? 

"That sounds like a heaping sack of presumptuous horse shit to me," he says. Karkat's glare, if anything, intensifies. 

" _Presumptuous?_ " Karkat snaps back. 

"Yeah, presumptuous. You're thinkin' you caused every single doomed timeline your session ever spawned? Really? You really think that?" 

"No! But I know for a fact that I caused a _lot--_ " 

"You think that I'm going to let anything fuck up this timeline and doom us all now, in the fuckin' end game? Post-credits? During the victory lap? You think Rose will? You think Terezi will?" 

Karkat goes quiet. Dave reaches the end of his ability to maintain all that searing eye contact and starts counting concentric circles in the ceiling, instead. He gets to sixteen. 

"I think if anyone could manage to snatch defeat from so far into the jaws of victory, it's me," Karkat says, finally, and he sounds so fucking _fucked up_ that Dave's insides all sort of clench, painfully. "For some reason, I don't know, in some desperate bid of blind fucking victory-addled optimism, I assumed when we went through that fucking door everything would change. That the basic rules would kindly alter themselves in some way to remove all the ambiguity over my right to exist!" 

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. It's kind of funny. 

"Yeah, okay." 

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. 

Except it's not. 

"Do you know," Dave starts, stops. Goes. "The only other person I know that worries this much about the value of their own damn existence is _Dirk._ ” Karkat takes a breath like he has something to say to that, but Dave barrels right over that, fuck that, the stage is strictly Striders only right now and he has every right to hog the fucking mic. "Can I just say for a second how much it fucking sucks to have maybe the most important people in your life, like, we're talking at minimum a good two out of three here, constantly on and on and fucking on about how they make things worse or at least potentially worse for everyone just by, I don't know, continuing to exist? When, like, okay, what's the alternative? What’s the point? What does a guy have to do to impress on a couple of self deprecating assholes that if they didn’t _exist_ , the timeline you’re so damn worried about goes from being fragile to _nonexistent_ , and, I -- Fuck. I..." 

He just kind of stops, again. Counts. 

"Sorry," Karkat says. 

"Yeah," Dave replies. "I know.”

Silence makes his tongue itch. “It’s cool,” he adds after a few seconds, just to break it up. 

"Do you know what else really fucking sucks?" 

"Vacuum cleaners," Dave snaps back, because he's fucking hilarious, full stop. No one is blinking back tears in this perfect can full of comedy and domestic bliss. What kind of shitty happy ending would that be? 

"Being afraid," Karkat says. 

"Jet engines." 

"Dave." 

"Mosquitoes." 

"It's not that I don't want to fucking exist!" 

"FYI, that last one was literal _and_ figurative, combo bonus." 

"Will you just _listen?_ " Karkat is kind of leaning over him, now, his sharp-angled and strangely attractive face filling up the space between Dave's eyes and the ceiling rings, so he stops counting and closes his eyes, instead. Karkat makes a frustrated noise, heaves himself up, and the bed creaks like he's actually going to get up and and walk out. A jolt of actual, real fear lances through Dave's middle like an honest-to-god bolt of lightning. An actual electric chill runs through him and stands the hair on his arms on end. His eyes snap open. He grabs blindly, catches a handful of Karkat's sweater, and clings to it. 

"Fuck, wait," he says, and he hates how thin his voice sounds, Karkat is right. Being afraid fucking _sucks._ But he knew that already. "Sorry, wait, Karkat. I know you don't! I know."

Karkat just sits there with his back to him, legs hanging off the side of the bed, a tense slope to his shoulders. But he doesn't move to get up, and after a few quiet, indecisive beats, he starts to talk. 

"It's not even that I think things will necessarily be better without me. It's irrational! It's completely irrational. I just wanted so badly for that fucking door to fix everything! Which was stupid! But when you think of an _ultimate reward,_ well, maybe the overly grandiose name of the thing lends itself to a little bit of wishful thinking, okay? Maybe I was hoping eternity for us, for _me_ , might be filled with something other than me waking up in a sweaty, spastic panic every other night wondering if today's the day I'm going to look into your eyes and see nothing but that creepy blank white stare that means inevitability has reared its ugly head and once again, I -- somehow, I --" 

He makes a wordless sort of choking noise, shrugs his shoulders, flails his arms out like his limbs are overloading. Dave tries, makes an honest to god effort, to catalog the emotions that assault him while he watches this, listens to this. Sadness, got it. Anger, but not really at Karkat. This shitty, bone-deep ache he doesn't know how to label that makes him think _God damn_ and _Oh, Karkat,_ and _Fuck Alternia and fuck Sburb and fuck everyone and everything that ever made you feel this way._

Dave scoots forward, lets his death grip on the sweater go and just slides his arms around Karkat from behind, instead. Karkat kind of tries to shrug him off, makes a cursory effort at least, but it isn't serious, he just hates it when people see him cry. Dave just squeezes him tighter. 

"Firstly," Dave says, while Karkat tries really hard to even out his breathing, "Eternity is a long fucking time. Like. A long fucking time, Karkat. I'm supposed to be the God of Time, or whatever, and my fucking brain turns into a salted fucking pretzel if I think too hard about what forever might actually mean, for us." 

He waits. Karkat hesitates, nods. 

"We're barely like, a fraction of a fraction into scratching the surface of the _massive fucking thing_ that is eternity, if that's actually what we're in for, here, and no shit we're still getting over the fucking wringer this bullshit game put us through, we all are." 

"Right," Karkat says, and his voice actually sounds pretty steady. Karkat never cries for long. Too many shitty instincts. 

God, they have a lot in common. 

"You know I still have my stupid shit," Dave says. "Puppet asses and impromptu sword fights and possessed fucking jujus and a psychotic hell guardian, I've still got all that swimming around in here, occasionally wrecking shit. Wrecking _me._ But it's better, isn't it? It's better every day. We made it through our sessions. We made it off the meteor. We made it through the final battle and we made it through that fucking door, and isn't it better?" 

"Yeah." A little shuddering sigh that passes from Karkat to Dave like a physical transference. "Yeah, you're right." 

"And if it's better after three years, what will it be like after six? Ten? Twenty? Two thousand? An arbitrary number with a literal infinite number of zeroes behind it?" 

Karkat lets out this raspy, rueful chuckle. "The frogs don't actually live _forever_ , idiot." 

"Don't you try and get me out on a shitty technicality, Karkat, that's low. Low, bro." 

Karkat exhales in an exasperated little huff, but his hands come up and settle over Dave's arms, warm and solid and comforting, which is fucking hilarious, Dave thinks, because he is the one trying to do the fucking comforting, here. “Do you think we’ll get old?” he asks, and he’s making this humming noise while he talks so his voice comes out different, fuller. More weird shit that never gets old. Old. Huh. 

“I don’t know,” Dave says, shrugs, scoots closer, tugs Karkat against him. The collar of his over-sized sweater is pulled just enough to one side that there’s this hypnotizing expanse of smooth grey shoulder exposed, and Dave Strider is the new world’s second gayest xenophile, so there’s basically no way he can _not_ lean forward and kiss him, there. Karkat tips his head back, and the curls of thick wiry hair around his ears tickle the side of Dave’s face. 

“Maybe just old _enough,_ ” Karkat says, and the humming troll thing his throat is doing is deeper, now. 

“For what?” Dave follows the first kiss up with a second, and a third, traveling up the side of Karkat’s neck and landing just beneath his weirdly delicate pointy alien ears. Because… because he wants to, and because he thinks Karkat wants him to, and because someone he wants maybe wanting him back shoots another full fucking syringe of embarrassing brain chemicals into him and it’s nice to associate his accelerating heart rate with something pleasant. “Driving? Smoking? Drinking? Maybe just loitering outside bars in the early hours like a vagrant, I always thought that sounded pretty cool.” 

Karkat’s ear honest to god twitches, like he can control the fucking thing, and Dave runs his tongue over the outer shell of it, tracing its shape. Karkat jerks his head away, his steady humming dissolving into low-pitched arrhythmic stuttering, and Dave laughs quietly over his shoulder. 

“I just _think,_ ” Karkat says, in a tone like he’s trying to scold but he’s so full of shit, Dave _knows_ these alien noises and they’re just as telling as a good old fashioned tent in the pants. “After thinking for so long that I’d be culled before my first drone season, and _long_ before I ever stumbled across anyone impaired enough in their decision centers to put up with my howling hoofbeast shit in any context conducive to romance, maybe it would be the most satisfying fuck-you of all time to make it to actual observable adulthood with someone who… someone, that…” 

“...Really wants to elaborate some on the concept of satisfying fucks?” 

Karkat sighs, shakes his head just enough to drag those scratchy, mussed up curls back across Dave’s face. Dave rests his chin on his bony shoulder, fingers playing at the hem of his sweater in front. “Or, I guess,” Dave continues, when it becomes clear Karkat isn’t going to reply. His voice catches and his cheeks light up like a goddamn neon billboard, blazing pink, but instead of advertising _hot topless tuesdays_ it’s just _embarrassing emotional garbage_ blinking ad infinitum. “I guess, someone who loves you. Like, a lot. Like, really just wants you to be happy, and feel safe, and maybe wanted, and appreciated, and like his existence in this brave new world or whatever the fuck is a net fucking positive for everyone lucky enough to exist around him because it fucking _is_ , god damn it--” 

“--Yeah,” Karkat cuts him off, fingers folding between Dave’s, gripping his hands hard. “Yeah, something like that.” 

“We can probably make that happen,” Dave says, sliding his eyes shut while Karkat slips their hands under his sweater together and the compelling texture of too-smooth alien abs tingles under his fingertips. Damn. Dave flattens his hands and drags his palms up, over, slow and aimless and everywhere, and leans in to kiss his way back down the side of Karkat’s throat. The humming is back and it goes straight to his dick, if he’s being honest, emotions are hard but the body is harder, and it’s too easy to focus on being obscene so he can forget about how vulnerable he feels in the wake of all that emotional availability. Right. God. He’s so much better than he was, and he’s still so fucking _fucked up._

“I’d really like that,” Karkat is saying, leaning back against him, letting his sweater inch up little by little until Dave’s fingertips tickle over his ribs and his lips make a wet sucking sound in the little dip between neck and shoulder. “Fuck,” he says, voice vibrating, and that’s good, that’s good, but -- then for some reason he’s pulling away, he’s wiggling insistently forward, he’s trying to loosen Dave’s arms around him. Dave’s eyes flicker open. “Shit,” Karkat gasps. “Shit, fuck, let go.” 

Dave lets him go. Karkat shoots to his feet, mattress bouncing, and spins to face him. Dave looks up, brows raised, hands up, palms out.

“Sorry,” Dave says, breathless, eyes wide, chest tight and aching and a coil of dread blooming cold and deep in his guts. Did he fuck something up? Was that presuming too much? Is Karkat _actually_ going to walk out and -- 

“ _Dave,_ ” Karkat says, sharply, and suddenly his hands are on Dave’s face, his thumbs are resting lightly on his temples, and Dave just blinks up at him, feeling very small and very, very pathetic. He needs him so bad. He’s starving for it, for arms tight around him and a body pressed against him and a person who loves him moaning his name and making him moan a little, too. “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Karkat rumbles, leaning in to press a quick, reassuring kiss onto his lips. 

Then he straightens up and pulls his sweater off and -- 

“Karkat,” Dave says, running his eyes over him. Yeah. Starving. “Oh, shit, Karkat.” 

“Yes, Dave?” He’s smirking a little now, oh fuck, oh shit. 

“I am so _fucking_ gay,” he says, scooting eagerly over so Karkat can climb back into bed beside him, over him, on top of him, fuck yes, fuck yes. 

“We’ll see about that,” Karkat snorts, and while nothing about the way he rolls his eyes looks genuine, the kiss he follows it up with is so fucking real it burns.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at [@landofsomethingsomething](http://landofsomethingsomething.tumblr.com)!


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